The pace is in dispute, but the need for brands to advance technologies and find new ways to engage with the near always-on wireless user is universal.

But how? And what shape does that take?

“If you have a real specific need for doing it and you think it's going to solve a problem, being an early adopter (of technology) is great,” former JetBlue mobile lead Jonathan Stephen told me in an interview for my new book, “The Art of Mobile Persuasion”. http://artofmobilepersuasion.com

“You are quick to fail and quick to being successful. There are others out there who think this can be an enhancement to an experience and maybe those are the ones who don't necessarily jump on the early bandwagon but they continue to see as the technology improves itself, that they will adapt over time and a lot of the kinks will have been worked out. Best practice would have been created and they would have followed those guidelines.

“It really depends on the position that you're in. If you've got the capital to do that kind of investment, by all means I always think that being an early adopter is fantastic but you have to be prepared to fail. You're not going to get it right the first time (all the time). No one ever has.”

Sometimes being second, third or later has its advantages.

WhatsApp, built by former Yahoo employees as a text-messaging alternative, is a cross-platform mobile messaging app that allows users to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS. In 2014, Facebook purchased the company and access to more than 600 million active users for $19 billion.

“I always use the phrase, ‘I may not be early to the party but I always like to make an entrance,’” Stephen said. “Sometimes there are technologies out there and I wasn't the first to get to it but I definitely want to make sure that I get noticed when I launched that technology. It takes a lot of thought. It takes a lot of strategy in terms of what is behind it. It takes a lot of humility to take a step back and realize where you will be successful and where you want there to go.

“There will be a lot of successes and a lot of failures. You learn that over time. But more than anything it goes all the way back to that business strategy.”

Credibility is more important than that new widget, something that Stephen thinks about each time that he walks into senior management with a plan and asks for resources.

“False promises is what creates contention within the executive level,” he said. “You don't want to change the way your business has been running. If your business hasn't been innovative in the past, if the goal is to take your business out of the 1950s and get it into the future where you become this early adopter - it takes an organizational change to do that. You can't force technology upon an organization.”

Curtis Kopf, who recently left Alaska Airlines to drive change at Premera Blue Cross has, has seen – and been part of innovation – in large enterprises including Microsoft and Amazon.

At Amazon, he was part of a hand-picked 14-person team in the U.S., Europe and Asia that scaled and extended “Search Inside the Book,” a discovery tool that searches and displays the full contents of hundreds of thousands of books from domestic and international publishers.

“Every company wrestles with this,” Kopf said of innovation. “We all come from different places whether you are an airline, a bank, or Amazon.com. I've experienced the spectrum of companies based on their business model and who they are have different comfort levels and appetites.

“Amazon.com is going to be a company that makes really big bets -- things that may not materialize for five years or seven years, even ten years. Other companies won't view the world that way.”

Everyone, Kopf said, has a place.

“There's definitely a continuum of innovation and then there are obviously companies out there that are category creators,” he said. “Clearly a lot of the companies that we think of innovators weren't first. Obviously Google wasn't the first search engine (in fact, 20 were launched earlier, according to Wikipedia). They just did it in the new and better way. Apple definitely wasn't the first to do a smartphone. They just did it in a new and better way.

“Innovation is talked about so much that it is almost become meaningless. Every company on the planet says that they are innovative. It's part of their mission statement. Obviously as consumers we all interact with these brands and the truth is that they are not all innovative.”

While he was leading change at Alaska Airlines, Kopf and his team had a broad definition of innovation.

“Being an airline we want to make sure since we have 13,000 employees, many of whom are not technologists, that people are clear that innovation is not just about technology,” Kopf said. “We define innovation as solving problems in new ways. Just keep it as simple as that. And then there is a range of innovation from incremental to disruptive.

“Being first is great. There are times that being first could be really important. If you can get it an advantage that you can sustain, there's some buzz and credit that you get from customers by introducing something first. But I don't think innovation in and of itself means being first. It could be taking something that someone else started and doing it in a new way.”

The paths are diverse, but the end goal for brands remains the same – mobile persuasion that drives sales, engagement, and loyalty.

-Briefing warning from the Daleks before firing their extermination rays on various "Doctor Who” episodes

What is one of the most well-known catch phrases on the long-running BBC series, “Doctor Who,” might eventually be uttered by a robot greeting you at your front door to take care of your termites.

Farfetched? Maybe right now, but a robot may soon be coming to your home to spray pesticides, clean your windows, and perhaps even tutor your kids.

ABI Research expects the global market for consumer robots to top $6.5 billion by 2017. BI Intelligence says the market for consumer and office robots will grow at a CAGR of 17% between 2015-2019, seven times faster than the market for manufacturing robots.

And some other key takeaways from BI Intelligence in their ‘The Robotics Market Report’:

• Three distinct categories will dominate the consumer/office side: home cleaning and maintenance; telepresence (i.e., telecommuting to events or remote offices) and advanced robots for home entertainment.

• The ubiquity of smartphones and tablets is making it easier to develop robots for consumer and office applications. The report says mobile devices offer designers the opportunity to ‘outsource’ computing and user interface tasks to companion devices, allowing developers to produce app-controlled robots at more accessible price points.

• Robot vendors still face significant challenges – a lot of people are still turned off by robots too humanoid in appearance. “There is also a brewing potential for the kinds of intellectual property battles seen in the smartphone space,” added BI Intelligence.

The robot invasion is well underway. Lowe’s announced last year that the company’s Innovation Labs unit was testing OSHbot, a retail-ready, mobile multilingual robot, designed to help shoppers navigate stores quickly and easily.

Still in development, OSHbot not only knows where every piece of inventory is at all times, but has a telepresence enabling shoppers to connect with off-site experts who can provide useful home projects information.

According to Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs, “home improvement is a very high involvement thing so having that ability to ask questions in your native language every time to a robot, makes the expectation that every time you’ll have the same high quality experience.”

A few other quick examples:

Tractica, a market intelligence firm focusing on human interaction with technology, reported that SoftBank Robotics and Aldebaran Robotics have tag teamed to produce Pepper, which their creators say is the first robot able to not only read and respond to human emotion, but also analyze how people are feeling and guide them in the right direction. Tractica says Nestle Japan plans to use Pepper to sell Nescafe machines in home appliance stores throughout Japan by the end of this year.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will introduce Nao at a few of its bank branches this summer on a trial basis. The robot, noted Tractica, can speak 19 languages and uses a camera to detect emotions from customers’ facial expressions.

And last year at International CES, Industry Week reported that the French-based firm Keecker rolled out a robot that can project video or other content from a tablet or smartphone to a wall or ceiling.

“You can enjoy life without being tied to the television set,” said Pierre Lebeau, the company’s founder/CEO.

Lastly, while the sky’s the limit on how robots will be utilized by marketers to sell products and services, how humans control and interact with them is a critical component for success.

“A tough challenge for small business managers with robots will be consistently hiring quality people to take care of the robots,” he said. “These devices will need to be set up, programmed, monitored and repaired. No benefit comes without a price.”

What’s considered adultery really isn’t readily defined in this Biblical passage. And for the numerous online sites that offer a chance to be anonymously naughty, that’s probably good for them – and good for their business. And it is a big business.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece on how the dating industry has become a global multi-billion dollar annual industry. Market research firm IBISWorld predicts, for instance, that it will be just under $3 billion in four years.

Data on extramarital dating sites is sparse but UK-based The Independent reported these interesting snippets back in February:

• Canada-based Ashley Madison, the 800-pound gorilla of the industry, is hugely popular in the UK, for instance; it currently operates in 45 countries with more than 32 million members worldwide. Ashley Madison (parent company Avid Life Media is now trying to raise about $200 million by listing shares for Ashley Madison in London later this year) also claims to be the world’s second largest dating site – only Match.com is bigger.

• A 2013 freedom of information request showed that Members of Parliament, peers, and their staff in Parliament had clicked on an extra-marital dating website called Out of Town Affairs 52,745 times. The site’s moniker – “Adult dating with no complications.”

And last year Ashley Madison worked with researchers from New York University’s Stern School of Business and the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, analyzing data on more than eight million men who had registered with the site. The Wall Street Journal reported that the study was one of six published together in ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ journal. It examined when people made significant life changes.

The Journal story also stated that “the study found about 950,000 men ages 29, 39, 49, 59 and their numbers on the dating site were 18% higher than what would be expected by chance, according to the researchers. The study also looked at data for women and found a similar, though less pronounced, pattern.”

And way back in 2007, researchers at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and Cal State University-Los Angeles, surveyed 60,000+ heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals. They asked more than 100 questions on infidelity.

“Men looked for sexual variety and excitement,” said Dr. David Frederick, assistant professor of healthy psychology at Chapman and the study’s lead researcher. “Women were more likely to fall in love with someone else or to look for reassurance that they were still desirable.”

Today there are literally dozens of extramarital dating sites; some accept various forms of advertising, some also offer affiliate programs. Ashley Madison’s, affiliate program, for example, bills itself as “an easy-to-join system that enables webmasters, affiliates and publishers to earn monthly pay checks by promoting one or more of the sites within our diverse network of offerings.”

Despite the growing popularity of extramarital dating sites, there have been some hiccups.

French site Gleeden has 2.3 million members in Europe, including one million in France. Women don’t pay to register on the site; men buy credit, opening up different levels of access to registered women.

Gleeden was hit in March with a legal complaint against the site’s American publisher, Black Divine, in a Paris superior court. The Association of Catholic Families (ACF) filed a complaint about risqué ads splashed on the backs of buses in several French cities. A French court will now decide whether the company is illegally encouraging spouses to cheat.

And there may be some legal precedence, reports BBC News. Article 212 of France’s Civil Code states “married partners owe each other the duty of respect, fidelity, help and assistance.”

“What we are trying to do with our suit is to show that the civil code – the law -- has meaning…what makes Gleeden different from other websites out there is that its business model is based on marital infidelity,” said Jean-Marie Andres, ACF president.

No matter the Gleeden outcome, it’s safe to bet that this rather unique segment of the online dating industry will continue to flourish.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/05/30/discreet-affairs-sites-generating-gobs-of-revenue-%e2%80%93-and-controversy/feed/0Vendor Consolidation is Sorely Neededhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/04/29/vendor-consolidation-is-sorely-needed/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/04/29/vendor-consolidation-is-sorely-needed/#commentsWed, 29 Apr 2015 15:48:54 +0000Roy de Souzahttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=39417... Read more]]>You know things have become difficult for marketers when the President and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) admits that all the money flooding into ad tech has merely caused more chaos. As a marketer you certainly already know this as you attempt to deal with the tangle of new partners who come between you and the consumer. As a publisher you rail at the way every new middleman takes a small piece of the pie that represents your inventory.

It’s time for everyone to consider consolidating from the current melange of startups to a single larger vendor who can do it all.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the display Lumascape. Notice the sheer number of possible partners, and then take a look at the number of acquired and shuttered companies.

Display Lumascape

All this has got to stop. Marketers, the ones who pay the bills, must think about consolidating to a few larger trustworthy vendors and stop experimenting with startups that promise the Holy Grail and sell you stuff that doesn’t work as promised and doesn’t measure what you need measured.

The Video Lumascape

But you’re not relying on display anymore, are you? You are also using video, and you’re moving to mobile.

You will need fewer, bigger, better partners that can take you across desktop, tablet, and mobile.

ZEDO, a company that has been in the ad tech business since 1999, has a buy side offering in its ZINC division, and a sell side offering in our more familiar publisher ad server and operations services.

Over the years, watching the market evolve, we too have evolved, into a platform for easy and automated buying of our high impact, highly viewable premium inventory. We get consistent high marks for viewability from MRC-certified vendors, and we are active in the Online Trust Alliance fighting against the distribution of malware and the commission of ad fraud.

And now we are developing new mobile formats for use both in a web browser and alongside applications. Here is the mobile Lumascape, with hundreds of additional companies to contend with. Don’t put up with it. Choose one partner you can rely on.

And apparently, so is the growth potential of the burgeoning cannabis industry. GreenWave Advisors, a marijuana research and financial analysis firm (could anyone have remotely envisioned such a firm a decade ago?) prognosticated last year in a report that if the federal government and all 50 states legalize recreational marijuana, it could be a $35 billion annual business by 2020.

While that’s probably a Rocky Mountain High pipe dream for the near future, another cannabis industry investment and research firm, Oakland, CA-based ArcView Group, said that the U.S. market for legal cannabis almost doubled from $1.5 billion in 2013 to $2.7 billion last year. ArcView also predicts that by 2020, another 14 states will legalize recreational marijuana and two more states will legalize medical marijuana.

Currently four states – Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington – have legalized retail marijuana; Washington D.C. voters legalized recreational use but sales are still illegal.

Erik Devaney, writing in HubSpot, said it’s not just marijuana growers, distributors and dispensaries comprising this potentially lucrative landscape.

“It’s also fertilizer companies, and lighting system companies, and hydroponic supplies companies, and jar & container companies, and analytical testing laboratories – there are even staffing groups that specialize in placing workers in the cannabis industry,” said Devaney.

Sounds like a marketer’s dream, n’est pas?

Not so fast.

Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. So marijuana marketers are still faced with numerous hurdles. Google and Facebook, noted Devaney, forbid advertising marijuana on their platforms. Same holds true for photo-sharing service Instagram (owned by Facebook) – cannabis industry accounts belonging to businesses have been suspended.

“In many cases the online restrictions that marijuana marketers face are simply a result of companies trying to adhere to the law,” said Devaney. “Under federal law, marijuana dispensary operators are classified as narcotics traffickers. So if a company helps those operators sell their product (e.g., through providing ad space, or by allowing them to share photos on a public platform), that company theoretically could be convicted of participating in a criminal conspiracy.”

There are a number of other significant hurdles. A 1982 federal tax code amendment – known as Section 280E – denies tax credits or exemptions to businesses “trafficking” in controlled substances. So a lot of newbie marijuana dispensaries in Colorado and Washington, for instance, are taking a big hit (pun intended) - federal tax rates in many instances have ranged between 60-90 percent. They also can’t write off advertising costs, employee salaries and rent.

And most banks still won’t do business with the marijuana industry so legal weed has become a de-facto cash business. One that is, First Security Bank of Nevada, has opened accounts for about 80 marijuana-related businesses.

“The applicants hold approximately $35 million in deposits,” said John Sullivan, the bank’s president/CEO. “As a small community bank, there are benefits to providing services to the industry in the form of new deposits as well as opening doors to other businesses and services.”

Media companies have by and large avoided selling ad space to cannabis-based businesses too because again, at the federal level, it’s illegal to advertise marijuana and related products.

And trying to patent a marijuana brand is currently impossible right now – the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) won’t issue a trademark for something that’s currently not lawful on the federal level.

Despite all of the aforementioned, the industry continues to grow. Colorado retailers sold $386 million of medical marijuana and $313 million for recreational use last year; tax revenues were $63 million, licenses/fees brought in another $13 million. The state expects annual sales to top $1 billion by 2016.

Private equity groups also see opportunities. Last fall, Seattle-based Privateer Holdings cobbled together more than 40 investors and has raised over $50 million that is being spent on various cannabis industry ventures. One of these is Marley Natural, created by the family of the late Jamaican reggae artist Bob Marley. The family launched what they call the world’s first global cannabis brand – it will sell cannabis-infused creams, lotions and various accessories.

Privateer Holdings has made one U.S. acquisition, according to CNBC – Leafly, which bills itself as “the world’s largest cannabis information resource.” Leafly, per their web site, says “we make the process of finding the right strains and products for you fast, simple, and comfortable.”

Creating demand and building brand loyalty will continue to pose challenges over the next few years. John A. Quelch, a Harvard Business School marketing professor, told Forbes that a national mass-market brand of marijuana is not on the horizon anytime soon. Until a majority of states – and the federal government - legalize marijuana sales, large cigarette and alcohol companies won’t take the risk.

Quelch does think some marijuana companies may expand to additional states to carve out early market share.

“They’ll achieve economies of scale that position them to be bought out later by national players. Unlike craft beer, marijuana would be inexpensive to transport across state lines to retail outlets across the country. I think you’ll definitely see a couple of companies get licenses in more than one state,” said Quelch.

Clay Butler, who founded now defunct Canna Cola, a soft drink containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, summed it up:

"My suspicion is that, if some day it is decriminalized, and you can get marijuana products in a liquor store or a 7-Eleven, I really don't think it would be the big established food companies that would get involved," Butler said. "I could see them buying out existing brands, which is a lot easier for them anyway. I think the market is going to the early pioneers."

In the conclusion of my recent "exit interview" with legendary New York Times ad industry columnist Stuart Elliott, we discuss what it was like to cover such a idiosyncratic industry without much first-hand experience in the business.

How did being one step removed hinder - or help?

As Elliott says goodbye to the Times, we'll get his views on that topic.

And we'll try one last time to get his predictions for what's next in the world of advertising. His response is worth noting even for those of us who do work in this crazy, wonderful industry.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/04/04/farewell-qa-with-ny-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-concl-uncertainty-certain/feed/04 Best Ways for Consumer Electronic Marketers to Score During March Madnesshttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/20/4-best-ways-for-consumer-electronic-marketers-to-score-during-march-madness-2/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/20/4-best-ways-for-consumer-electronic-marketers-to-score-during-march-madness-2/#commentsFri, 20 Mar 2015 20:53:53 +0000Jaime Singsonhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=39154You think March Madness is all about basketball? Think again. According to the Consumer Electronics Association, “nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of sports ‘Super Fans’ describe themselves as early technology adopters.” Along with a thirst for HDTVs, Xboxes, and sports in 3D, 68% of basketball fans say they are interested in watching sports on their mobile devices, compared to 30% of all sports fans.

Consumer electronics marketers: March Madness offers you a perfect opportunity to make your own slam dunk with customers by putting dynamic creative to work for you this month. You have a lot of variables to consider when developing an effective advertising strategy—multiple purchase paths and outlets, diverse consumer needs, and endless combinations of features and benefits…lots of moving parts. Which is why a dynamic creative strategy is often the best approach – because dynamic creative ads, by definition, also have a lot of moving parts—that can be easily managed.

Dynamic creative lets advertisers address multiple combinations of variables in a single campaign. It can be an efficient, manageable way to develop individualized ads in one of the most complex marketing environments.

Here are a few of the best ways to use dynamic ads to inject relevance and drive performance in consumer electronics campaigns.

1. Engage at every stage. No matter where your customers are in their purchase decision-making process, they need to be engaged with your brand’s story. Dynamic creative can help you do this in a number of ways, such as by:

Dynamically optimizing upper-funnel ads based on post-impression conversions to promote the most influential creative concepts.

Don’t just retarget on products they viewed. Supplement that strategy by engaging consumers who have shown interest in a category with personalized creative featured products, new arrivals, and bestsellers from that category.

Retargeting with accessories or supplies after the purchase.

2. Tell a story. Few things draw consumers closer to your brand than the power of narrative, with each facet of the story building on the previous. Dynamic creative and dynamic video in particular offer a powerful way to tell your story over time, benefit by benefit, while you continuously engage consumers with fresh messages as the narrative builds.

3. Optimize every channel.

Promote purchases via your site and retail partners – and in both cases deep-link to the product or category page.

Drive traffic to the sites that perform best and are most likely to offer the best consumer experience – you’ll create an incentive for third-party resellers to sell more of your product.

Most big electronics retailers will have rich pages for big brands, and a segment of your consumers will go directly there to research. Work with the retailer to co-promote and retarget users to those pages – it’s a win-win.

Localize with nearby retailer locations and information, and/or try time-limited dynamic coupons that can be printed out and used at the store.

To measure offline conversions, try an incentive to get the user back online to register their purchases (while you fire a conversion tag.)

Auto-optimize to automatically adjust promotions based on each reseller’s performance.

4. Tailor the message. If you take advantage of audience buys for your prospecting campaigns, you can segment based on demographics, lifestyle, and affinities – and tailor benefits to resonate with those characteristics. It’s important to target with context in the creative whenever possible, especially in conjunction with review sites. Promote the product category about which the user is reading, and/or detect the name of your competitor’s product to promote yours instead.

It’s not too late to get in on March Madness—or think about the next time big consumer electronics campaign. When marketing starts to get complex, it’s time to get creative—and go dynamic.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/20/4-best-ways-for-consumer-electronic-marketers-to-score-during-march-madness-2/feed/0More Leads On Your Radar?http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/12/more-leads-on-your-radar/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/12/more-leads-on-your-radar/#commentsThu, 12 Mar 2015 19:28:53 +0000Winnie Brignac Harthttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=39088Do you have a consistent funnel of ideal leads on your radar and a lead generation strategy to nurture them towards a sale?

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that pulls prospects toward your company and product, where they naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your customer’s interests, you naturally attract leads and ideal prospects.

Results of an inbound marketing strategy:

Increases ideal leads/lead generation

Increases web traffic

Improves SEO

Provides quality content to attract target audience

Nurtures ideal leads to be top-of-mind when they are looking for a solution

Automates marketing messages

Know which marketing efforts and channels are giving the best ROI

We build the Inbound Marketing Strategy, launch the platform and campaign.

How do you score on your lead generation strategy?

True North. A plan that keeps you on course and aligns your purpose, brand and strategy – this is what we call your True North. Finding your True North starts with assessing where you are in eight key areas on the True North Radar: Strategic Alignment, Positioning, Distinction, Branding, Authenticity, Lead Generation, Messaging and Marketing.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/12/more-leads-on-your-radar/feed/0FAREWELL Q&A WITH NY TIMES AD COLUMNIST STUART ELLIOTT (PT 3): CHANGE IS (ON) THE AIRhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/04/farewell-qa-with-ny-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-pt-3-change-is-on-the-air/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/04/farewell-qa-with-ny-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-pt-3-change-is-on-the-air/#commentsThu, 05 Mar 2015 01:47:19 +0000Rick Mathiesonhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=39018In part three of an expansive "exit interview" I conducted with Elliott just weeks after he announced his retirement in December - he points to how ad agencies used to pretend they were bigger, until that became a liability, and why brands had better keep up with demographic trends, or risk being risk being left behind.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/03/04/farewell-qa-with-ny-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-pt-3-change-is-on-the-air/feed/0Farewell Q&A with NY Times Ad Columnist Stuart Elliott (Part 2): What I Saw at the Revolutionhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/02/17/farewell-qa-with-ny-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-part-2-what-i-saw-at-the-revolution/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/02/17/farewell-qa-with-ny-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-part-2-what-i-saw-at-the-revolution/#commentsTue, 17 Feb 2015 17:03:07 +0000Rick Mathiesonhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=38886Content marketing may get a lot of buzz these days - but it's as old as advertising itself.

In part two of my conversation with longtime New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott, we continue to talk about how social media has paradoxically fueled growth in television viewership - especially for events like the Super Bowl.

But as part of this wide-ranging farewell Q&A with Elliott - who retired in December after nearly 25 years of covering advertising for the Times - we get into sponsorship advertising, as well as so-called content and video marketing.

Surprise: None of this is future-forward at all. Indeed, it's a return to the golden age of advertising. But while it sideswipes the problem of ad-skipping technologies and an ever-expanding universe of digital distractions, it comes with some considerable challenges of its own.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/02/17/farewell-qa-with-ny-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-part-2-what-i-saw-at-the-revolution/feed/0Farewell Q&A with New York Times Ad Columnist Stuart Elliott (Part 1): What I Saw at the Revolutionhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/02/05/farewell-qa-with-new-york-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-part-1-what-i-saw-at-the-revolution/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/02/05/farewell-qa-with-new-york-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-part-1-what-i-saw-at-the-revolution/#commentsThu, 05 Feb 2015 20:08:54 +0000Rick Mathiesonhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=38844... Read more]]>The advertising world released a collective gasp when news hit that Stuart Elliott - the longtime advertising columnist for the New York Times - was accepting a buy-out package and would retire.

After nearly 25 years of covering advertising for the Times, not to mention stints at USA Today and Ad Age before that, Stuart and his column had become must-read for puissant, timely insights on Mad Ave.

And what a quarter century it was. From the early 1990s to today, the ad industry went from analog everything to digital domination; from "Married with Children" to "Modern Family;" and from bigger-is-better, to small is the new black.

"Who could or would have thought in the early ’90s that 20-odd years later the hegemony of television, for decades the most powerful ad medium, would be under siege, or at least, in question" Stuart wrote in his final column December 18.

"Ratings data, the currency of television, is growing problematic because viewership is more difficult to measure when people use mobile devices instead of TV sets; or watch shows online, as streaming video or as video-on-demand. And it is easier than ever for viewers to ignore or avoid traditional commercials; popular streaming services like Netflix are (gasp!) ad-free."

In an expansive new interview just days before Sunday's Super Bowl, I talked to Stuart about what he saw at the revolution - and why, despite all the change around us, everything old is new again.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/02/05/farewell-qa-with-new-york-times-ad-columnist-stuart-elliott-part-1-what-i-saw-at-the-revolution/feed/0Maybe You Deserve This Matchhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/01/28/maybe-you-deserve-this-match/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/01/28/maybe-you-deserve-this-match/#commentsThu, 29 Jan 2015 03:27:34 +0000Neal Leavitthttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=38781... Read more]]>A number of years ago I was retained to provide marketing communications services for a San Diego-based dating site. Good concept, decent funding from private sources, number of stories generated across various media genres. Ultimately, however, it wasn’t enough. Competition was too fierce; site just wasn’t attracting enough eyeballs and the venture folded.

Fast forward to 2015. Buddy of mine asked if I knew of any good dating sites as he was, to quote him, ‘back in the game.’ Told him I hadn’t been following the space for awhile but was curious to see how the industry had evolved.

The dating industry has become huge - $2.2 billion in 2014 according to market research firm IBISWorld; $2.7 billion by 2019. And Pew Research says that of Americans in a committed relationship that have used an online dating site, one in three met online.

Decided to have a little fun so did a bit of research/searching for oddball, offbeat and in some cases, truly weird dating sites. All seem to be flourishing; many have attracted advertising. In short, your future significant other may just be a few clicks away, no matter your fetishes.

So here are a few:

Vampersonals – Still searching for that special undead darling? For those with enlarged incisors, this site’s especially for you. Vampersonals boasts “whether you want to meet others like you for simple recreation and a drink, or find that special someone to shine within the dark for you, come check us out! We don’t bite…too hard.” Reckon that drink’s probably red-hued.

Women Behind Bars– This started out as a pen pal site but has grown considerably since then. Looking for that special woman doing 5 to 20 but really don’t want to commit to a long-term relationship? This one’s for you then.

Here’s what one satisfied customer posted on the site:

“I purchased an address in January and have been corresponding with a beautiful, warm, funny, loving woman. This past weekend I finally was able to visit her. She is in Texas and I am in Pennsylvania. Well, this woman is the one. I am planning to have her coming home with me when she is released and then both of us want to have our relationship grow (possible marriage). I am just completely amazed that one letter has turned into a great, although long distance, relationship.”

And advertisers apparently like the site’s traffic. According to Todd Muffoletto, who founded the site, Women Behind Bars offers a banner rotation ad program; he says the site has also been the subject of 11 TV and 197 radio interviews and numerous print/web based articles.

Fat Bastard Dating – This site originated in the United Kingdom and boasts ‘thousands of members.’ Tired of working out to impress a date? Forget about it – exhale and let that paunch out and allow those love handles to reign supreme. In fact, the site says “being a fat bastard doesn’t mean you have to be single forever…the fatter you are, the better as far as the members on this site are concerned. Girls like a guy who has got presence and men love a cuddly lass.” The site also says there’s no obligation to pay until “you’ve found a fat bastard worth contacting.”

Kingsnake After Dark – OK, this one admittedly creeps me out a bit. Billed as a ‘herp-centric dating site’ for snake lovers, Kingsnake After Dark is attracting advertisers, albeit most of them, not surprisingly, are reptilian-centric. The home page has an ad running alongside the site’s main logo for Rodentpro.com®, which offers low prices for mice, rats, rabbits, chicks, and quail – everything you need to keep that seven-foot boa constrictor that lives under your bed well-fed and content.

SaladMatch.com – If you’re a steak and potatoes kinda guy or girl, this site’s probably not for you. But there are obviously a lot of arugula-lovers out there. The Facebook page has more than 11,000 Likes; Twitter followers are approaching 4,000. The site was launched by Just Salad, a New York City chain of salad restaurants/cafes. You can find your salad ‘soul mate’ by listing your favorite salad ingredients.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2015/01/28/maybe-you-deserve-this-match/feed/0eSports Racking Up Billions of Viewer Hours – and Dollarshttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/12/27/esports-racking-up-billions-of-viewer-hours-and-dollars/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/12/27/esports-racking-up-billions-of-viewer-hours-and-dollars/#commentsSun, 28 Dec 2014 03:16:33 +0000Neal Leavitthttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=38510... Read more]]>So your 13-year old son is seemingly spending every waking moment hunched over his Xbox, PS Vita, phone, tablet or (doubtful but some pre-teens and teens still use ‘em) laptop playing one endless video game after another. You’ve morphed into an avatar from his perspective; the video games have become his real world.

What do you do?

Well, if he’s really good, let him play on. eSports has finally reached critical mass and has become a multi-billion dollar business, notes market research firm SuperData Research.

Note the following from a trends brief the company put out last April:

• More than 71 million worldwide watch competitive gaming. In fact, about 14.9 million people tuned in to the 2013 World Series; last year 32 million watched the League of Legends Season 3 World Championship – more than double the audience for our so-called ‘national pastime’!

• The average eSports viewer watches 19 times a month; average session is more than two hours;

• eSports is becoming a revenue driver and marketing vehicle for online game publishers and major brands; former like Riot Games, Wargaming and Valve; examples of latter include Coca-Cola and Intel;

• The International 2013: Dota 2 prize pool was more than $2.8 million; total prize money from all prize pools last year was about $25 million.

As reported by CBS News, companies like Amazon also see such potential in eSports that it paid almost $1 billion for Twitch, a social network that allows users to watch/stream video games live.

“Like sports, you want to watch it live,” said Twitch COO Kevin Lin. “You want to be there when something interesting happens. You want to be there for that moment and share it as a communal experience. It’s very much like being in a crowd, only digitally.”

St. Louis-based Clix, a digital marketing agency, added that even the U.S. government and academic institutions are getting onboard:

“Professional gamers from around the world are being granted work visas similar to professional athletes to compete on American soil; even Robert Morris University (Chicago) has fielded a varsity team to compete in competitions for thousands of dollars in scholarship winnings.”

Market research firm IHS Technology projects consumers will not only spend 6.6 billion hours watching competitive gaming by 2018 (up from 1.3 billion in 2013), but video of eSports will be worth major ka-ching too – about $300 million by 2018.

Michael O’Dell, eSports manager for Team Dignitas, said that live streaming services have been a major factor in the dramatic growth of eSports.

“Twitch especially has made it easy to tune in, with its multi-platform accessibility and low barriers to entry for users on both sides of the streaming spectrum,” said O’Dell.

And Anthony Cornish, marketing director for The Pokémon Company, told MCV (a trade news/community site for professionals working within the UK and international video games market), that the social aspects of streaming will accelerate the industry’s growth.

“The fan communities surrounding all games have been galvanized by social media and online play,” said Cornish. “Larger competitive gaming events are also drawing crowds that fill arenas and capturing online views that rival cable show audiences. Competitive gaming has mass appeal and isn’t as niche as many think.”

To wit, at Valve’s Data 2: The International tournament, more than 10,000 gaming aficionados at sold-out Key Arena in Seattle watched team Newbee rout Vici Gaming three games to one (best of five format). The take: just over $5 million of the more than $10 million in prize money.

So if Junior’s a whiz at League of Legends, Dota 2 and Starcraft II, and is only pulling a high C in algebra, cut him some slack. Those flyin’ fingers and that dazzling hand/eye coordination just might yield large dividends someday.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/12/27/esports-racking-up-billions-of-viewer-hours-and-dollars/feed/0Instagram’s key factor to its triumph over Twitterhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/12/12/instagram%e2%80%99s-key-factor-to-its-triumph-over-twitter/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/12/12/instagram%e2%80%99s-key-factor-to-its-triumph-over-twitter/#commentsFri, 12 Dec 2014 16:29:44 +0000Winnie Brignac Harthttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=38377Instagram made a big announcement on Wednesday – that it now has 300 million monthly active users, surpassing Twitter’s reported numbers of 284 million.

Why has Instagram surpassed Twitter?

It seems that Twitter’s growth has slowed to a crawl. One potential cause for this decline in growth may be due to the fact that Facebook purchased Instagram, which gave the channel access to an audience of 1.35 billion.

Instagram’s diversity of content has contributed greatly. The visual offers all of the popular aspects of Twitter, with little, if any, of the poor aspects. Twitter’s problem arises from its overactive noise. With Instagram, the volume is manageable and you’re likely to actually see every photo in your feed.

However, while some users favor the reliable, standardized photostream, Instagram’s limited approach to a visual-specific platform does constrict users and marketers. Twitter, on the other hand, can tweak its service and expand its offerings as much as it likes.

Getting More User Engagement

In the end, this statistic should be lighting fires under other social networks to focus less on user numbers and more on user engagement. With a 50% user base growth in 9 months, Instagram definitely has nailed it and proved its $768 million investment from Facebook.

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/12/12/instagram%e2%80%99s-key-factor-to-its-triumph-over-twitter/feed/0Technology Transforming the Fashion Industryhttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/11/27/technology-transforming-the-fashion-industry/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/11/27/technology-transforming-the-fashion-industry/#commentsFri, 28 Nov 2014 00:28:55 +0000Neal Leavitthttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=37969... Read more]]>Last week after a nice lunch with my sister, niece, brother-in-law and cousin, I got corralled into following them into Nordstrom’s in downtown San Francisco. I quickly realized that with only two magazines, a book, and a smartphone, it would be a challenging afternoon.

And once my niece pulled about a half-dozen outfits off a rack and said “I just want to try on a few things,” the situation became untenable. Elevated heart rate. Accelerated pulse. Beads of sweat on forehead. If the store had started playing Slim Whitman songs, my head would have exploded, similar to what happened to the little green Martians in Tim Burton’s campy Mars Attacks.

Quickly gave everyone a hug and said I was dashing out to Ghirardelli’s for a sundae (dark chocolate hot fudge; medical studies have indicated dark chocolate’s good for you, ergo, Ghirardelli’s sundaes are healthy. Bit of twisted logic but effective for assuaging any guilt feelings).

But while scraping away the last nanometer of ice cream, it got me thinking about how technology has radically changed the fashion industry in just a few short years.

“Technology is now completely ingrained in our interaction and relationship with fashion retail,” said Arabella James, a futures consultant at The Future Laboratory. “It’s now part of every shopping moment, from inspiration and production to purchase decision and transaction.”

A few examples:

Forbes recently estimated that 3D printing will be a $3.1 billion industry by 2016; $5.2 billion by 2020. Models have already started wearing 3D-printed couture. And Apparel predicts the day will soon be at hand to see it, buy it, and print it shopping – “a consumer will spot a must-have article of clothing, complete the checkout transaction in seconds, and sit back and watch as their personal 3D printer whips up a custom fitted version right in the comfort of his home.”

“Imagine designers creating scale models of – well – of models wearing the designs they’ve created; how might those scale models be used to popularize and sell fashion? The possibilities are endless. The impacts will be enormous,” said Singh.

News.com.au recently wrote about C&A, a Dutch chain of fashion retail clothing stores that launched a campaign combining online and in-store consumer decision making. Dubbed FashionLike, whenever someone ‘likes’ an item of clothing online at the C&A website, the ‘like’ “gets totaled on a screen embedded in a clothes hanger on the rack in store. Consumers can then decide whether they want the more popular clothes with the larger number of ‘likes’ or opt for the ‘less liked’ pieces.”

And designer Rebecca Minkoff opened two tech savvy stores in New York and San Francisco this month. As reported by Elizabeth Holmes in The Wall Street Journal, each store has a large screen where customers can browse merchandise or request items in specific sizes to try on.

The store also texts shoppers when a fitting room is free and inside the room, a touch screen mirror is available to get more items or ask for assistance.

“Merchandise tags equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology track which items customers try on, and provide the store with a precise, real-time view of inventory. Meanwhile, employees use iPads to handle shoppers’ requests and check out from anywhere in the store,” said Holmes.

We’ve also seen innumerable stories about wearables – especially watches – over the past 12-18 months. But there have been a few recent developments with other types of wearables that are generating some buzz.

One of these is MICA – My Intelligent Communication Accessory. The $495 intelligent bracelet (announced Nov. 17) not only has precious gems and Ayers snakeskin, but includes two years of AT&T wireless data service provided by Intel. Opening Ceremony, an international retailer, designed the bracelet; it was engineered by Intel. Intel says the accessory will be available next month at Opening Ceremony New York and Los Angeles, select Barneys New York locations, and online at Openingceremony.us and Barneys.com.

And earlier this year, Cuff rolled out a nine-piece line of wearables, including bracelets, necklaces and, for the men, a key chain, all accompanied by the CuffLinc device. The Cuff app alerts people wearers designate as “first responders" when help is needed. Cuff sends an SOS to people you choose, and it doesn’t stop until someone responds. Designated people receive your location, live audio, and other relevant information to get you (or a loved one) any required assistance.

Von Furstenberg best summed up the mind meld of fashion and technology:

“The definition of fashion is ‘l’air du temps,’ –the essence of the time we live in, so it is absolutely normal that it meets technology.”

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/11/27/technology-transforming-the-fashion-industry/feed/0Integrated Marketing: A Better Approach to Building Leadshttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/11/17/integrated-marketing-a-better-approach-to-building-leads/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/11/17/integrated-marketing-a-better-approach-to-building-leads/#commentsMon, 17 Nov 2014 21:35:41 +0000Winnie Brignac Harthttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=37645As long ago as 1989, the American Association of Advertising Agencies defined an integrated marketing campaign as “an approach to achieving the objectives of a marketing campaign through a well-coordinated use of different promotional methods that are intended to reinforce each other. A comprehensive communications plan combines the strategic roles of advertising, public relations and sales promotions to provide clarity, consistency, and increased impact.” Basically, integration is the application of consistent brand messaging across both traditional and nontraditional marketing channels.

Inbound Marketing: Making Integrated Marketing Easier

While social media and online marketing channels have provided opportunities to expand the definition of non-traditional marketing, the real breakthrough in effective integration has been the development of computer based, technology driven Inbound Marketing platforms. Giving new meaning to CRM, these platforms not only make consistent communication across channels easier, but provide critical reporting and measurement features in real-time to exponentially increase the effectiveness of campaigns.

Learn the ABCs of Inbound Marketing

Seems simple—but developing an Inbound Marketing campaign takes time, resources, and commitment to building lasting, long-term results. Our e-Book The ABC's of Inbound Marketingwillhelp you get started.

We focus a lot on how advancements in ad technology impact digital adertising at 140 Proof, but we also enjoy exploring the ways we behave across social networks as a result of these developments. For data on how we use social networks to express different sides of our personalities, check out the IPG Media Labs study.

A brief foray into the world of anonymous apps reveals why the new social media space is no longer on the down low. With the swipe of a thumb, it’s now possible to learn about the sexually deviant escapades of the faceless individual <100 meters away; sympathize with the self-loathing health nut who just scarfed down a Big Mac; and puzzle out the identity of an anonymous friend who claims to hate her husband.

Exactly what anonymous apps mean for modern culture and how they will be monetized remains to be seen, but it hinges on the interpretation of user behavior.

Fear and Loathing in Anonymous Apps

At first swipe, the content shared on anonymous social media sites appears markedly different from the streams of edited photos, cheery statuses, and humble-brag tweets found on public networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Whereas the interests and aspirations that users share on public sites combine to form an idealized digital self image--a powerful cue for marketers in targeted ad tech--fear and frustration tend to fuel the personality dimensions revealed on secret-sharing apps.

Developing a monetization strategy to encompass these personality dimensions proves challenging. After all, few brands would choose to be associated with an outlet for our basest desires -- save, perhaps, for a roofie distributor.

Finding the Familiar in an Anonymous World

But there's more overlap between behavior and content on private and public networks than initially apparent. For instance, many of the posts on Secret take on a distinctly Thought Catalog-y tone, with musings about the laziest things users have done and how they pretend to be ninjas at the gym. The marketing potential for this type of content has already been tested on sites like Buzzfeed, Gawker, Reddit, and other millenial destinations.

Replacing a twitter handle with a randomized avatar doesn’t totally change the way we behave, either. By the fourth post describing a wild sexual escapade, it’s clear that even under an invisibility cloak the tendency to exaggerate wins out in anonymous apps. Regardless of the topic, personal airbrushing will always have a presence on social media sites, revealing targeting cues and marketing potential.

Compartmentalizing Our Digital Lives

Just as it did in the days of 90's chatrooms, the desire to compartmentalize our digital lives determines the content and engagement on private channels. Facebook's Rooms, while not entirely anonymous, is the most recent example of an app capitalizing upon this desire by providing an outlet while maintaining the ties between public and private sharing. This experiment may usher in a new era of anonymous apps that provides users with the sense of compartmentalization while learning more about the emotions driving behavior.

Certainly, anonymous apps draw out the less savory aspects of our personalities, but they are not merely the pathetic swamplands devoid of aspiration that they initially seem. As long as we continue to reveal previously unseen dimensions of ourselves on anonymous apps, marketers will evolve targeting capabilities to encompass all aspects of our personalities.

Scores of pundits and prognosticators awake and arise this time of year from their marketing crypts to make predictions, outline scenarios on what they see as hot digital marketing trends for the upcoming year. And we see a lot of those aforementioned terms – and others – you know what some of them are - year-after-year, being bandied about and re-purposed.

To use some pirate vernacular, “arrrggggghhhhhh!”

All good-intentioned, most impart a lot of useful info-nuggets but it’s easy to get lost in the morass.

So is there anything really interesting that might help drive awareness of products/services, and ultimately sales next year?

Yup.

Internet Retailer recently did a search marketing survey (full results being published in November) from mid-September to mid-October encompassing responses from 95 participants; about two-thirds identified themselves as working for web-only retailers.

Some interesting survey snippets:

• 46.2% reported increased traffic to their e-commerce sites over the past year through natural, or organic search;

• 32.9% generated at least half of their online sales through their paid search and organic search programs combined;

• 40.3% said their search marketing budgets increased over the past year;

• 53.3% said they would increase their pay-per-click search spending next year.

So the fight for top rankings via natural search will continue to gain traction.

Flip side of that, as reported by Lizetta Staplefoote in Entrepreneur Magazine, is that paid placements are not going away. Staplefoote said that changes to the Facebook algorithm in 2013 resulted in a 44% decrease in non-sponsored brand content in users’ newsfeed.

“LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Pinterest now offer sponsored content placements and ads that promise specific reach. The days of free reach are over. If you don’t pay, your followers very likely won’t see anything your doing in the social realm,” said Staplefoote.

Staplefoote added that another ’15 marketing trend to watch is that marketing automation tools will change the way you play. B2B businesses, particularly technology companies, have long paved the way in using marketing automation tools.

“However, many businesses have struggled to integrate their existing tools into a single system to take advantage of all the bells and whistles automation systems offer. For those who have made the leap, according to research from the Aberdeen Group, using marketing automation can increase conversion rates by over 50 percent,” noted Staplefoote.

Lastly, we’re also seeing executive titles morph and/or change. McKinsey & Company predicts there will be a 40 percent projected growth in global data generated per year versus only a five percent grow in global IT spending. And as Big Data continues to have a greater impact on e-commerce, New Jersey-based digital marketing agency Lion Five Studios says the relationship between the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) will become even more important:

“The CIO can no longer work in a vacuum…with IT budgets going outside of IT, the new role of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) is starting to emerge and this trend will only increase as companies place a strategic emphasis on digital content,” noted the studio.

To quote Arte Johnson, best known for his portrayal of a German soldier on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, “verrrrry interesting.”

]]>http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/10/26/2015-just-around-the-corner-so-what%e2%80%99s-the-skinny-on-digital-marketing-trends/feed/0The Future of Search: Drive Big Profits with Competitive Intelligencehttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/10/23/the-future-of-search-ci/
http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/10/23/the-future-of-search-ci/#commentsFri, 24 Oct 2014 00:27:56 +0000Kent Lewishttp://blogs.imediaconnection.com/?p=37287... Read more]]>In the second to last session of the day, Michael Sticker, Director of Marketing for SEMrush, stepped up to discuss competitive intelligence and search marketing. The first topic Stickler covered understands the value of organic traffic and how to put a dollar value on it. Of course this is what his platform does and as a customer, I can tell you it is a powerful competitive intelligence tool. He included links to helpful reports that outline how much Fortune companies spend on paid search that will be available on SlideShare soon. He cites Patel’s generously detailed blog posts with insights, most recently on how he grew traffic 174 percent with is latest startup. He spent a good deal of time walking through the SEMrush platform and recommended a few other tools like MOZ FollowerWonk.

Jamie Smith with EngineReady and iSpionage followed Stickler to provide perspective from the paid side of search in regards to competitive intelligence. Smith outlined seven spying strategies to dominate your competition. For starters, there are four components to measure:

He then advises startups to utilize tools like SEMrush, iSpionage and others to evaluate the metrics mentioned above from a competitive intelligence standpoint. Smith briefly covered how to create a Google AdWords account and start with the keyword level. The first strategy is to evaluate top advertisers and domains. Using SimilarWeb (or Alexa.com), you can determine which sites are visited before or after they visit your competitors. That provides insights into which domains on which sites you may be able to advertise on to capture their audiences.

The next strategy is to crowd-source for advertising. By looking at competitors’ ads, you can see what messaging is being used and how effective the ads might be. From there, you can reverse engineer campaign structure. The next strategy is setting up alerts for competitors and keywords (new advertisers on a given keyword or new ad copy on a given keyword). In all, Smith outlined powerful strategies, which unfortunately require an investment in tools. If you as a startup can’t make the investment, consider utilizing a search marketing agency like Anvil.

Naming a startup is a difficult task. It’s made even more difficult by the fact that the majority of the great .com domains are gone. Choosing a good name that embodies what you do, creates a real identity and it’s easy to say and spell is a challenge.

I’ve faced this challenge several times with Sandbox.com (online fantasy sports), myGeek and then Fetchback. We were especially proud of the brand we built at FetchBack. The name had meaning and a real identity. It was easy to build our marketing around and it attracted clients and employees that were like-minded. It was also a .com; a huge plus in a world where it becomes harder and harder to find a good domain.

adhesive.co

Our current startup is adhesive.co and it’s in the online ad-tech industry. We chose adhesive because easy to understand when spoken, has a positive meaning and ‘ad’ is a core part of the word (. We also liked the tie-in with 3M, a very innovative company. That was the impetus anyways.

It’s hard to admit that the name you chose isn’t a good fit.

Unfortunately, adhesive.co lacks that soul and identity we’ve had in previous company names. It’s a ‘good’ domain but it’s not great and some even said they hate it.

The past year and half we have seen tremendous growth. Our clients are working together perfectly to create new opportunities and incremental conversions. By the end of this year, we are expanding the headcount and moving into a brand new office. Since we are making the move anyways, we decided it was time for a change.

We wanted something that builds off the core of what we do. We’re an online advertising co-op and we provide the ability for our clients to pool the consumer data so that members can build advertising campaigns that drive incremental conversions.

The process: How We Started

We started by reviewing past word lists and creating new root words that might be the core of a good domain. Some of those words included: rise, sprout, thrive, share, spring, flourish, group, and many others. After weeks of batting things back and forth we happened upon Piggyback. For those who are not in our industry, the term is used to describe a technical process on how someone might deliver ‘tags’ to a website. The name immediately brought a smile to our faces. It has an identity and speaks directly to the core of clients helping each another. We thought we had a hit on our hand. While piggyback.com was taken, we could purchase piggybak.com. We decided to purchase it for as a hedge.

It was time for us to circulate the name to trusted advisors. The response was good but not great. The misspelling of the name was a concern. The name itself was also in question. Some loved it while others felt it was too ‘soft’ and we would end up with little pink stuffed pigs all over our office. Gavin Hayes, CEO of Springboard Healthcare, sent a note asking if we had ever tried crowdsourcing for additional options. The immediate concern was around making our internal process public. He referenced a great article around the subject by Sandi Lin, the CEO of Skilljar.

Giving Crowdsourcing an Option

We decided to give Squadhelp, a crowdsourcing site for domain names, a chance. We had already invested significant time to the process and another week wouldn’t hurt.

We posted our contest brief and a cash prize of $112. All of the entries in the contest have to be domains that are freely available for purchase. We figured it was a small amount of money and we might end with some new blood to the creative process.

Within 5 days, we received over 800 options that included 2 strong names; Growspark and Sharebloom. We decided to extend the contest a few more days with some additional direction to our contest brief. A root word that stood out to us during our creative process was ‘hive’. It’s a word that speaks to what we do and sounds great. We asked for some additional creative options around this word.

Three days later we had 1125 options from 81 different participants with 16 of those options rating 1 star or more. Hivewyre.com was in this batch of options.

Finalizing the Name

At this point, we had some viable options and we felt it was important to open up the process to the entire company. Based on input from advisors, we narrowed down the list to Piggybak, ShareBloom and Hivewyre. There were some immediate negative reactions to Piggybak. It was too ‘soft’. We had a great discussion and then asked everyone to do a quick surveymonkey vote. Hivewyre was a clear winner.

We love our new name but it doesn’t come without concerns. It’s a challenging word to say over the phone and the misspelling adds to that challenge. We have yet to hear what our clients think but we’re hopeful. We’re excited to start building our identity around ‘the hive’.

Don’t use your real company name or personal name. This is something we were concerned about during the process. Thankfully it was not an issue.

Provide lots of feedback. Sifting through a lot of options is a challenge and as you would expect names never make the cut. Make sure to rate those that good traits about them, it can provide inspiration and guidance for the contestants.

Be careful purchasing domains prior to the contest being over. One of the worst things that can happen is finding a great name and having it registered by someone else. We decided to register one of our potential winners prior to the contest being over. This is a violation of Squadhelp rules. If you decide to register and keep a domain that’s not your winner, you should compensate the contestant.